Could Western Jews (Ash. and Seph.) descend from Aegeans and Levantine admixture?

[p96767]

No once again you are making up lies

Target: Yemenite_Ma'rib
Distance: 0.9011% / 0.00901137
53.8 Levant_Tell_Qarassa_Early_Antiquity
12.4 Levant_Megiddo_MLBA
10.2 Levant_ISR_C
5.4 KEN_Pastoral_N
5.4 Levant_JOR_EBA
4.8 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N
3.6 SDN_MA_Kulubnarti
2.6 Levant_Natufian_EpiP
1.8 Levant_Baqah_BA

Now I feel like you are trolling, Yemenite_Ma'rib is 100 percnet EBA Jordan with a distance of 5 percent amazing.

I'm not even gonna bother with Palestinian muslim because we can already see your false claims

What is the difference between Levant Megiddo MLBA and Levant Jordan EBA? (except the time periods)
Anyway enjoy. It's hard to talk to someone who is politically motivated....

[Gentica277282]

I have Juris Doctor on top of a BA from a major US University, maintain a professional license in two countries/two languages,and am well-read as well (like you) in General and Hellenism/Alexander/Roman Empire History, am multilingual, and have an undergraduate degree in one of the STEM fields. I do not share the bias that all anecdotes in Jewish sources are to be denigrated or ignored, on the contrary, Hhaza"l are IMHO generally reliable, not precise, but generally reliable, except where the physical sciences of the period were lacking. I reject as well the strange dichotomy you suggest that "For example - if the Talmud/Mishna didn't mention conversions in certain times and places then they didn't happen" ? Honestly , I have never before seen such an idea, from where is it pulled?

Do you believe you can be biased?

[Targum]

Do you believe you can be biased?
No I can be more persuaded or less persuaded by the strength of different evidence or arguments, and I have preferences and opinions,
but I differentiate between empirical facts in STEM subjects and nuanced inferences in Social Sciences. History and Sociology are not exact
sciences, and as an observant Jew the Torah view, which is usually accessible in written sources as well as living scholars,is presumed to have
ruahh-haqodesh (Divine inspiration) I will not lightly reject a statement by the Sages; I am capable of concluding regarding apparent anomalies,
that the deficiency is in my understanding and inability to reconcile, and that greater understanding/ability to make fine distinctions (בינה Binah)
is within G-d's purview to grant when it is needed. I reject a man-centered worldview which itself denies Hashgahhah Peratit (Divine Oversight).

[Claudio]

"...I have a nagging suspicion that both the Italian and the Greek elements in AJ ancestry come largely from converted imperial-era Romans..":

Without statistics or numbers, those are exactly the anecdotes that are preserved in Mishnah and Gemara. A variety of Greco-Roman
or Hellenized/Romanized others are mentioned as gerim, both in Rome itself, and in the provinces. The well known example is the attributed
compiler of the main תרגום Targum, translation+commentary/explanation of the Hebrew Scriptures (TeNa"Kh) the revered אונקלוס Onkelos, is
described as either a ger himself, or the child of Roman gerim.

Take this snippet from Cassius:
:C45C9655-C558-47EB-A3E0-846462AB8F37.jpeg
This comment gives me the impression that conversion to Judaism was not just common among Romans of the Italian peninsula but rather had/was popular with Hellinized people in General within the Roman Empire.
We’ve generally established that there was a generalized Southern Italian like profile throughout Rome- South Italy- Greece- Anatolia
So I imagine this amalgamation is this same shared south Italian looking east med component that we are seeing paired with the original Levantine in most of these models.

[Aben Aboo]

deleted

[Targum]

Sounds very plausible in light of both the Greco-Italian dna plus the literary record of complex engagement and mutual influence of the Jewish and Greco-Roman interaction, as described by sources on both sides.

[DudeTheDud]

I don't know about you, but I learned about the Kitos War in university, and the Mishnah and the Gmarah are studied as a valid source of history for this. For instance, the description of the destruction of the Jewish community of Alexandria in that war is detailed in the Talmud.

In many cases, many modern secular historians, base their research on religious texts or texts written by religious authority.

This isn't the same as the Tanakh or the Torah which, if you don't believe what is written there, should be taken in the same context as the texts of Homer.

No - the Mishnah and Gmara were written down by people, the person writing or saying a specific thing being quoted.

Of course not everything need to be taken as it is, and if we have number of sources, from different angles, it's even better.

But all historical sources of that time were biased, and modern studies using them, know this. When professor Aryeh Kasher wrote his works, he constantly used Tannaic and Amoraic Jewish sources.

This wholesale contrasting of the entire Tanakh with the entire Talmud is incorrect. Some parts of the Tanakh such as later parts of Kings or Nehemiah are good history, the latter with a named author, others such as Joshua are mythologized past ala Homer, and others such as Jonah are in all likelihood literary inventions. Similarly in the Talmud there are genuine beraitas which go back hundreds of years, others are mythologized around a historical core like many tales which we see are gradually inflated between the Tosefta, Yerushalmi and Bavli (e.g. Rashbi’s hiding) and others are pure inventions. You wouldn’t use Talmudic aggadot as a source for historical King David, say. Same thing goes for the New Testament (no serious scholar will value John and 1 Corinthians equally as sources for historical Jesus), and for any other text with a mythological/ideological bent. Scholars have many techniques, both internal to the text, external using other literary or archaeological sources, and typological using general characteristics of real vs fake texts, in order to identify which parts were actually written by the people they are attributed to, and what historical value may be contained within both genuine and misattributed parts.

The main thing we need to remember about the Talmud is that it is not primarily a historical text, but a legal and pedagogic one. What history appears in it is for the most part there either to help the rabbis decide debates regarding religious-civil law, or to further the lessons the rabbis want to teach their community. And it is subservient to the overarching trend of projecting the Rabbinic ideal both back in time and across space as the true, eternal representative of Jewish tradition. God himself is a Talmid Hakham studying Torah all day long! (well, actually just three hours a day per the Talmud)

It appears that this debate has went well off the path of empirical genetics and into the realm of speculative theories based on gut feelings and hopes. Now I’ve had it with this circlejerk, I said what I have to say and gave my sources when it appears both sides are arguing based on pre-established dogmas. I know for a fact that Western Jews are equal parts of the Jewish collective, equal & unique heirs to the long chain of Jewish tradition (today mainly of the rabbinic branch), and do preserve at least some genuine genetic remnants from ancient Judea e.g. the great Cohanim clade. The rest are details, and I hope we can argue them in good faith building on the historical, archaeological & genetic data from the ground up and not any other way.

[Freb]

.......

[DEM4867]

Take this snippet from Cassius:
:C45C9655-C558-47EB-A3E0-846462AB8F37.jpeg
This comment gives me the impression that conversion to Judaism was not just common among Romans of the Italian peninsula but rather had/was popular with Hellinized people in General within the Roman Empire.
We’ve generally established that there was a generalized Southern Italian like profile throughout Rome- South Italy- Greece- Anatolia
So I imagine this amalgamation is this same shared south Italian looking east med component that we are seeing paired with the original Levantine in most of these models.

The interesting question is how extensive were those conversion?
Western Jews today (even non Ashkenazi who do not have an additional northern shift) have slightly stronger affinity to those “Imperial Roman” (south Italian like) samples than to Hellenistic period Phoenician samples for example.
Was this east med Imperial Roman genetic profile itself a mix of levantine and hellenic?
Also maybe there is an anatolian like component in addition to proper east med among western Jews today?
I am struggling with even estimating the numbers

[Claudio]

The interesting question is how extensive were those conversion?
Western Jews today (even non Ashkenazi who do not have an additional northern shift) have slightly stronger affinity to those “Imperial Roman” (south Italian like) samples than to Hellenistic period Phoenician samples for example.
Was this east med Imperial Roman genetic profile itself a mix of levantine and hellenic?
Also maybe there is an anatolian like component in addition to proper east med among western Jews today?
I am struggling with even estimating the numbers

I think The Southern Arc paper eludes to Imperial Romans being much more Anatolian than previously estimated.